GITWEB.CONF(5)

okay so welcome to gitweb.conf(5) — the Gitweb (Git web interface) configuration file page from the Git Manual, bestie 💅✨ this is where your web-facing Git setup gets its whole vibe configured, and we are going through it with zero facts dropped, periodt.

✨ NAME ✨

gitweb.conf — Gitweb (Git web interface) configuration file 🫶

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

/etc/gitweb.conf, /etc/gitweb-common.conf, $GITWEBDIR/gitweb_config.perl

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

okay so the gitweb CGI script for viewing Git repositories over the web uses a perl script fragment as its configuration file. You can set variables using "our $variable = value"; everything from a "#" character until the end of a line is ignored. See perlsyn(1) for details.

An example:

# gitweb configuration file for http://git.example.org
#
our $projectroot = "/srv/git"; # FHS recommendation
our $site_name = 'Example.org >> Repos';

The configuration file is used to override the default settings that were built into gitweb at the time the gitweb.cgi script was generated.

While one could just alter the configuration settings in the gitweb CGI itself, those changes would be lost upon upgrade. Configuration settings might also be placed into a file in the same directory as the CGI script with the default name gitweb_config.perl — allowing one to have multiple gitweb instances with different configurations by the use of symlinks.

NOTE: some configuration can be controlled on a per-repository basis rather than gitweb-wide: see the "Per-repository gitweb configuration" subsection on the gitweb(1) manpage. iykyk 🦋

🌈 DISCUSSION 🌈

Gitweb reads configuration data from the following sources in the following order:

• built-in values (some set during build stage),
• common system-wide configuration file (defaults to /etc/gitweb-common.conf),
• either per-instance configuration file (defaults to gitweb_config.perl in the same directory as the installed gitweb), or if it does not exist then fallback system-wide configuration file (defaults to /etc/gitweb.conf).

Values obtained in later configuration files override values obtained earlier in the above sequence. slay, precedence ✨

Locations of the common system-wide configuration file, the fallback system-wide configuration file and the per-instance configuration file are defined at compile time using build-time Makefile configuration variables, respectively GITWEB_CONFIG_COMMON, GITWEB_CONFIG_SYSTEM and GITWEB_CONFIG.

You can also override locations of gitweb configuration files during runtime by setting the following environment variables: GITWEB_CONFIG_COMMON, GITWEB_CONFIG_SYSTEM and GITWEB_CONFIG to a non-empty value.

The syntax of the configuration files is that of Perl, since these files are handled by sourcing them as fragments of Perl code (the language that gitweb itself is written in). Variables are typically set using the our qualifier (as in "our $variable = <value>;") to avoid syntax errors if a new version of gitweb no longer uses a variable and therefore stops declaring it.

You can include another configuration file using the read_config_file() subroutine. For example, one might want to put gitweb configuration related to access control for viewing repositories via Gitolite (one of Git repository management tools) in a separate file, e.g. in /etc/gitweb-gitolite.conf. To include it, put

read_config_file("/etc/gitweb-gitolite.conf");

somewhere in the gitweb configuration file used, e.g. in the per-installation gitweb configuration file. Note that read_config_file() checks itself that the file it reads exists, and does nothing if it is not found. It also handles errors in the included file.

The default configuration with no configuration file at all may work perfectly well for some installations. Still, a configuration file is useful for customizing or tweaking the behavior of gitweb in many ways, and some optional features will not be present unless explicitly enabled using the configurable %features variable (see also the "Configuring gitweb features" section below). iconic behavior tbh 👑

👑 CONFIGURATION VARIABLES 👑

Some configuration variables have their default values (embedded in the CGI script) set during building gitweb — if that is the case, this fact is put in their description. See gitweb's INSTALL file for instructions on building and installing gitweb.

🗂️ Location of repositories 🗂️

The configuration variables described below control how gitweb finds Git repositories, and how repositories are displayed and accessed.

See also "Repositories" and later subsections in the gitweb(1) manpage.

$projectroot

Absolute filesystem path which will be prepended to the project path; the path to the repository is $projectroot/$project. Set to $GITWEB_PROJECTROOT during installation. This variable has to be set correctly for gitweb to find repositories.

For example, if $projectroot is set to "/srv/git" by putting the following in the gitweb config file:

our $projectroot = "/srv/git";

then

http://git.example.com/gitweb.cgi?p=foo/bar.git

and its path_info based equivalent

http://git.example.com/gitweb.cgi/foo/bar.git

will map to the path /srv/git/foo/bar.git on the filesystem.

$projects_list

Name of a plain text file listing projects, or a name of a directory to be scanned for projects.

Project list files should list one project per line, with each line having the following format

<URI-encoded filesystem path to repository> SP <URI-encoded repository owner>

The default value of this variable is determined by the GITWEB_LIST makefile variable at installation time. If this variable is empty, gitweb will fall back to scanning the $projectroot directory for repositories.

$project_maxdepth

If $projects_list variable is unset, gitweb will recursively scan the filesystem for Git repositories. The $project_maxdepth is used to limit traversing depth, relative to $projectroot (the starting point); it means that directories which are further from $projectroot than $project_maxdepth will be skipped.

It is purely performance optimization, originally intended for MacOS X, where recursive directory traversal is slow. Gitweb follows symbolic links, but it detects cycles, ignoring any duplicate files and directories.

The default value of this variable is determined by the build-time configuration variable GITWEB_PROJECT_MAXDEPTH, which defaults to 2007.

$export_ok

Show repository only if this file exists (in repository). Only effective if this variable evaluates to true. Can be set when building gitweb by setting GITWEB_EXPORT_OK. This path is relative to GIT_DIR. git-daemon(1) uses git-daemon-export-ok, unless started with --export-all. By default this variable is not set, which means that this feature is turned off.

$export_auth_hook

Function used to determine which repositories should be shown. This subroutine should take one parameter, the full path to a project, and if it returns true, that project will be included in the projects list and can be accessed through gitweb as long as it fulfills the other requirements described by $export_ok, $projects_list, and $projects_maxdepth. Example:

our $export_auth_hook = sub { return -e "$_[0]/git-daemon-export-ok"; };

though the above might be done by using $export_ok instead

our $export_ok = "git-daemon-export-ok";

If not set (default), it means that this feature is disabled.

See also a more involved example in the "Controlling access to Git repositories" subsection on the gitweb(1) manpage.

$strict_export

Only allow viewing of repositories also shown on the overview page. This for example makes the $export_ok file decide if a repository is available and not only if it is shown. If $projects_list points to a file with a list of projects, only those repositories listed would be available for gitweb. Can be set during building gitweb via GITWEB_STRICT_EXPORT. By default this variable is not set, which means that you can directly access those repositories that are hidden from the projects list page (e.g. they're not listed in the $projects_list file). lowkey spicy but okay 🙈

🔎 Finding files 🔎

The following configuration variables tell gitweb where to find files. The values of these variables are paths on the filesystem.

$GIT

Core git executable to use. By default set to $GIT_BINDIR/git, which in turn is by default set to $(bindir)/git. If you use Git installed from a binary package, you should usually set this to "/usr/bin/git". This can just be "git" if your web server has a sensible PATH; from a security point of view it is better to use an absolute path to the git binary. If you have multiple Git versions installed it can be used to choose which one to use. Must be (correctly) set for gitweb to be able to work.

$mimetypes_file

File to use for (filename extension based) guessing of MIME types before trying /etc/mime.types.

NOTE: this path, if relative, is taken as relative to the current Git repository, not to the CGI script.

If unset, only /etc/mime.types is used (if present on the filesystem). If no mimetypes file is found, mimetype guessing based on the extension of the file is disabled. Unset by default.

$highlight_bin

Path to the highlight executable to use (it must be the one from http://andre-simon.de/zip/download.php due to assumptions about parameters and output). By default set to highlight; set it to the full path to the highlight executable if it is not installed on your web server's PATH. Note that the highlight feature must be set for gitweb to actually use syntax highlighting.

NOTE: for a file to be highlighted, its syntax type must be detected and that syntax must be supported by "highlight". The default syntax detection is minimal, and there are many supported syntax types with no detection by default. There are three options for adding syntax detection. The first and second priority are %highlight_basename and %highlight_ext, which detect based on basename (the full filename, for example "Makefile") and extension (for example "sh"). The keys of these hashes are the basename and extension, respectively, and the value for a given key is the name of the syntax to be passed via --syntax <syntax> to "highlight". The last priority is the "highlight" configuration of Shebang regular expressions to detect the language based on the first line in the file, (for example, matching the line "#!/bin/bash"). See the highlight documentation and the default config at /etc/highlight/filetypes.conf for more details.

For example if repositories you are hosting use "phtml" extension for PHP files, and you want to have correct syntax-highlighting for those files, you can add the following to gitweb configuration:

               our %highlight_ext;
               $highlight_ext{'phtml'} = 'php';

🔗 Links and their targets 🔗

Okay bestie, these config variables are all about gitweb’s links — where they point, whether they show up as text or an image, and where gitweb finds the page prerequisites like stylesheets, favicons, images, and scripts. Normally you just leave these at their defaults, with maybe one exception: @stylesheets. 💅

• @stylesheets — a list of stylesheet URIs, relative to the base URI of a page. You can totally specify more than one stylesheet, like using "gitweb.css" as the base and putting site-specific modifications in a separate stylesheet so upgrading gitweb is easier. For example, you can add a site stylesheet by putting this in the gitweb config file:

    push @stylesheets, "gitweb-site.css";

Those values that are relative paths are relative to the base URI of gitweb. This list should contain the URI of gitweb’s standard stylesheet. The default URI of the gitweb stylesheet can be set at build time using the GITWEB_CSS makefile variable. Its default value is static/gitweb.css (or static/gitweb.min.css if the CSSMIN variable is defined, i.e. if the CSS minifier is used during build).

🚨 Note: there’s also a legacy $stylesheet configuration variable, which was used by older gitweb. If the $stylesheet variable is defined, only the CSS stylesheet given by this variable is used by gitweb.

• $logo — points to the location where you put git-logo.png on your web server, or more generally the URI of the logo, 72x27 size. This image is displayed in the top right corner of each gitweb page and used as the logo for the Atom feed. Relative to the base URI of gitweb (as a path). Can be adjusted when building gitweb using the GITWEB_LOGO variable. By default set to static/git-logo.png.
• $favicon — points to the location where you put git-favicon.png on your web server, or more generally the URI of the favicon, which will be served as "image/png" type. Web browsers that support favicons (website icons) may display them in the browser’s URL bar and next to the site name in bookmarks. Relative to the base URI of gitweb. Can be adjusted at build time using the GITWEB_FAVICON variable. By default set to static/git-favicon.png.
• $javascript — points to the location where you put gitweb.js on your web server, or more generally the URI of JavaScript code used by gitweb. Relative to the base URI of gitweb. Can be set at build time using the GITWEB_JS build-time configuration variable. The default value is either static/gitweb.js, or static/gitweb.min.js if the JSMIN build variable was defined, i.e. if the JavaScript minifier was used at build time. Note that this single file is generated from multiple individual JavaScript "modules".
• $home_link — target of the home link at the top of all pages (the first part of view "breadcrumbs"). By default it’s set to the absolute URI of the current page (to the value of the $my_uri variable, or to "/" if $my_uri is undefined or is an empty string).
• $home_link_str — label for the "home link" at the top of all pages, leading to $home_link (usually the main gitweb page, which contains the projects list). It’s used as the first component of gitweb’s breadcrumb trail: <home-link> / <project> / <action>. Can be set at build time using the GITWEB_HOME_LINK_STR variable. By default it’s set to "projects", since this link leads to the list of projects. Another popular choice is to set it to the name of the site. Note that it’s treated as raw HTML, so it should not be set from untrusted sources. 🙈
• @extra_breadcrumbs — additional links to be added to the start of the breadcrumb trail before the home link, pointing to pages that are logically "above" the gitweb projects list, like the organization and department that host the gitweb server. Each element of the list is a reference to an array, where element 0 is the link text (equivalent to $home_link_str) and element 1 is the target URL (equivalent to $home_link). For example, this setting produces a breadcrumb trail like "home / dev / projects / ..." where "projects" is the home link:

        our @extra_breadcrumbs = (
          [ 'home' => 'https://www.example.org/' ],
          [ 'dev'  => 'https://dev.example.org/' ],
        );

• $logo_url, $logo_label — URI and label (title) for the Git logo link (or your site logo, if you chose to use a different logo image). By default, these both refer to the Git homepage, https://git-scm.com; in the past, they pointed to Git documentation at https://www.kernel.org.

---

🎀 Changing gitweb’s look 🎀

You can adjust how pages generated by gitweb look using the variables below. You can change the site name, add common headers and footers for all pages, and add a description of this gitweb installation on its main page (which is the projects list page), etc. So cute, so customizable. ✨

• $site_name — name of your site or organization, to appear in page titles. Set it to something descriptive for clearer bookmarks etc. If this variable is not set or is empty, then gitweb uses the value of the SERVER_NAME CGI environment variable, setting the site name to "$SERVER_NAME Git", or "Untitled Git" if this variable is not set (e.g. if running gitweb as a standalone script). Can be set using GITWEB_SITENAME at build time. Unset by default.
• $site_html_head_string — HTML snippet to be included in the <head> section of each page. Can be set using GITWEB_SITE_HTML_HEAD_STRING at build time. No default value.
• $site_header — name of a file with HTML to be included at the top of each page. Relative to the directory containing the gitweb.cgi script. Can be set using GITWEB_SITE_HEADER at build time. No default value.
• $site_footer — name of a file with HTML to be included at the bottom of each page. Relative to the directory containing the gitweb.cgi script. Can be set using GITWEB_SITE_FOOTER at build time. No default value.
• $home_text — name of an HTML file which, if it exists, is included on the gitweb projects overview page ("projects_list" view). Relative to the directory containing the gitweb.cgi script. The default value can be adjusted during build time using the GITWEB_HOMETEXT variable. By default set to indextext.html.
• $projects_list_description_width — the width (in characters) of the "Description" column of the projects list. Longer descriptions will be truncated (trying to cut at a word boundary); the full description is available in the title attribute (usually shown on mouseover). The default is 25, which might be too small if you use long project descriptions.
• $default_projects_order — default value of the ordering of projects on the projects list page, meaning the ordering used if you don’t explicitly sort the projects list (if there’s no "o" CGI query parameter in the URL). Valid values are "none" (unsorted), "project" (projects are by project name, i.e. path to repository relative to $projectroot), "descr" (project description), "owner", and "age" (by date of most current commit). Default value is "project". Unknown value means unsorted.

---

🧚 Changing gitweb’s behavior 🧚

These configuration variables control internal gitweb behavior. Vibes only, but make them good vibes. 💜

• $default_blob_plain_mimetype — default mimetype for the blob_plain (raw) view, if mimetype checking doesn’t result in some other type; by default "text/plain". Gitweb guesses the mimetype of a file to display based on the extension of its filename, using $mimetypes_file (if set and the file exists) and /etc/mime.types files (see the mime.types(5) manpage; only filename extension rules are supported by gitweb).
• $default_text_plain_charset — default charset for text files. If this is not set, the web server configuration will be used. Unset by default.
• $fallback_encoding — gitweb assumes this charset when a line contains non-UTF-8 characters. The fallback decoding is used without error checking, so it can be even "utf-8". The value must be a valid encoding; see the Encoding::Supported(3pm) man page for a list. The default is "latin1", aka. "iso-8859-1".
• @diff_opts — rename detection options for git-diff and git-diff-tree. The default is ('-M'); set it to ('-C') or ('-C', '-C') to also detect copies, or set it to () i.e. an empty list if you don’t want to have renames detection.

💀 Note that rename and especially copy detection can be quite CPU-intensive. Note also that non Git tools can have problems with patches generated with the options mentioned above, especially when they involve file copies ('-C') or criss-cross renames ('-B').

---

🌈 Some optional features and policies 🌈

Most features are configured via the %feature hash; however, some extra gitweb features can be turned on and configured using the variables described below. Besides the configuration variables that control how gitweb looks, this list also contains variables configuring the administrative side of gitweb (e.g. cross-site scripting prevention; admittedly this as a side effect affects how "summary" pages look like, or load limiting). Slay those security vibes. 👑

• @git_base_url_list — list of Git base URLs. These URLs are used to generate URLs describing where to fetch a project from, which are shown on the project summary page. The full fetch URL is "$git_base_url/$project", for each element of this list. You can set up multiple base URLs (for example one for git:// protocol, and one for http:// protocol).

🫶 Note that per-repository configuration can be set in the $GIT_DIR/cloneurl file, or as values of the multi-value gitweb.url configuration variable in the project config. Per-repository configuration takes precedence over the value composed from @git_base_url_list elements and the project name.

You can set up one single value (single entry/item in this list) at build time by setting the GITWEB_BASE_URL build-time configuration variable. By default it is set to (), i.e. an empty list. This means that gitweb would not try to create a project URL (to fetch) from the project name.

• $projects_list_group_categories — whether to enable the grouping of projects by category on the project list page. The category of a project is determined by the $GIT_DIR/category file or the gitweb.category variable in each repository’s configuration. Disabled by default (set to 0).
• $project_list_default_category — bestie, this is the default category for projects that don’t specify one. If you set it to the empty string "", those projects stay uncategorized and get listed at the top, above the categorized ones. It’s only used if project categories are enabled, which literally means if $projects_list_group_categories is true. Default is "" (empty string). 💅
• $prevent_xss — if true, some gitweb features get disabled so content in your repositories can’t launch cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. Set this to true if you don’t trust the content of your repositories. False by default (set to 0). 🛡️ no cap.
• $maxload — sets the maximum load we’ll still respond to gitweb queries with. If the server load exceeds this value, gitweb returns a "503 Service Unavailable" error. The server load is taken to be 0 if gitweb can’t determine its value. Currently it works only on Linux, where it uses /proc/loadavg; the load there is the number of active tasks on the system — processes that are actually running — averaged over the last minute. Set $maxload to an undefined value (undef) to turn this feature off. Default is 300. 💀
• $omit_age_column — if true, omit the column with the date of the most current commit on the projects list page. It can save a bit of I/O and a fork per repository. lowkey efficient ✨
• $omit_owner — if true, prevents displaying information about the repository owner. 🙈
• $per_request_config — if this is set to a code reference, it will be run once for each request. You can set parts of configuration that change per session this way. For example, one might use the following code in a gitweb configuration file:

our $per_request_config = sub {
        $ENV{GL_USER} = $cgi->remote_user || "gitweb";
};

If $per_request_config is not a code reference, it is interpreted as a boolean value. If it is true, gitweb will process config files once per request; if it is false, gitweb will process config files only once, each time it is executed. True by default (set to 1). 🫶

NOTE: $my_url, $my_uri, and $base_url are overwritten with their default values before every request, so if you want to change them, be sure to set this variable to true or a code reference effecting the desired changes. 👑

This variable matters only when using persistent web environments that serve multiple requests using a single gitweb instance, like mod_perl, FastCGI or Plackup. 💅

✨ Other variables ✨

Usually you should not need to change (adjust) any of the configuration variables described below; they should be automatically set by gitweb to the correct value. 🧚

• $version — gitweb version, set automatically when creating gitweb.cgi from gitweb.perl. You might want to modify it if you’re running modified gitweb, for example:

our $version .= " with caching";

if you run a modified version of gitweb with caching support. This variable is purely informational, used e.g. in the "generator" meta header in the HTML header. ⭐

• $my_url, $my_uri — full URL and absolute URL of the gitweb script; in earlier versions of gitweb you might have needed to set those variables, but now there should be no need to do it. See $per_request_config if you need to set them still. 🦋
• $base_url — base URL for relative URLs in pages generated by gitweb, (e.g. $logo, $favicon, @stylesheets if they are relative URLs), needed and used <base href="$base_url"> only for URLs with nonempty PATH_INFO. Usually gitweb sets its value correctly, and there is no need to set this variable, e.g. to $my_uri or "/". See $per_request_config if you need to override it anyway. 🎀

💅 CONFIGURING GITWEB FEATURES 💅

Many gitweb features can be enabled (or disabled) and configured using the %feature hash. Names of gitweb features are keys of this hash. 👑

Each %feature hash element is a hash reference and has the following structure:

"<feature-name>" => {
        "sub" => <feature-sub-(subroutine)>,
        "override" => <allow-override-(boolean)>,
        "default" => [ <options>... ]
},

Some features cannot be overridden per project. For those features, the structure of the appropriate %feature hash element has a simpler form:

"<feature-name>" => {
        "override" => 0,
        "default" => [ <options>... ]
},

As one can see, it lacks the 'sub' element. 😌

The meaning of each part of feature configuration is described below:

🍓 default 🍓

List (array reference) of feature parameters (if there are any), used also to toggle (enable or disable) the given feature. ✨

Note that it is currently always an array reference, even if the feature doesn’t accept any configuration parameters, and 'default' is used only to turn it on or off. In such a case you turn the feature on by setting this element to [1], and turn it off by setting it to [0]. See also the passage about the "blame" feature in the "Examples" section. 💖

To disable features that accept parameters (are configurable), you need to set this element to an empty list, i.e. []. 🌸

🦋 override 🦋

If this field has a true value, then the given feature is overridable, which means it can be configured (or enabled/disabled) on a per-repository basis. 🫶

Usually the given "<feature>" is configurable via the gitweb.<feature> config variable in the per-repository Git configuration file.

Note that no feature is overridable by default. 💅

🎀 sub 🎀

Internal detail of implementation. What’s important is that if this field is not present, then per-repository override for the given feature is not supported.

You wouldn’t need to ever change it in the gitweb config file. 😌

🌈 Features in %feature 🌈

The gitweb features that are configurable via the %feature hash are listed below. This should be a complete list, but ultimately the authoritative and complete list is in gitweb.cgi source code, with features described in the comments. 👑

🌟 blame 🌟

Enable the "blame" and "blame_incremental" blob views, showing for each line the last commit that modified it; see git-blame(1). This can be very CPU-intensive and is therefore disabled by default. 😭

This feature can be configured on a per-repository basis via the repository’s gitweb.blame configuration variable (boolean).

🍓 snapshot 🍓

Enable and configure the "snapshot" action, which allows the user to download a compressed archive of any tree or commit, as produced by git-archive(1) and possibly additionally compressed. This can potentially generate high traffic if you have a large project. 🚦

The value of 'default' is a list of names of snapshot formats, defined in the %known_snapshot_formats hash, that you wish to offer. Supported formats include "tgz", "tbz2", "txz" (gzip/bzip2/xz compressed tar archive) and "zip"; please consult gitweb sources for a definitive list. By default only "tgz" is offered. 💅

This feature can be configured on a per-repository basis via the repository’s gitweb.snapshot configuration variable, which contains a comma-separated list of formats or "none" to disable snapshots. Unknown values are ignored.

🌸 grep 🌸

Enable grep search, which lists the files in the currently selected tree (directory) containing the given string; see git-grep(1). This can be potentially CPU-intensive, of course. Enabled by default.

This feature can be configured on a per-repository basis via the repository’s gitweb.grep configuration variable (boolean).

🦋 pickaxe 🦋

Enable the so-called pickaxe search, which will list the commits that introduced or removed a given string in a file. This can be a practical and quite faster alternative to the "blame" action, but it is still potentially CPU-intensive. Enabled by default. 🔥

The pickaxe search is described in git-log(1) (the description of the -S<string> option, which refers to the pickaxe entry in gitdiffcore(7) for more details).

This feature can be configured on a per-repository basis by setting the repository’s gitweb.pickaxe configuration variable (boolean).

🎀 show-sizes 🎀

Enable showing the size of blobs (ordinary files) in a "tree" view, in a separate column, similar to what ls -l does; see the description of the -l option in git-ls-tree(1) manpage. This costs a bit of I/O. Enabled by default.

This feature can be configured on a per-repository basis via the repository’s gitweb.showSizes configuration variable (boolean).

💌 patches 💌

Enable and configure the "patches" view, which displays a list of commits in email (plain text) output format; see also git-format-patch(1). The value is the maximum number of patches in a patchset generated in the "patches" view. Set the default field to a list containing a single item, or to an empty list to disable patch view, or to a list containing a single negative number to remove any limit. Default value is 16.

This feature can be configured on a per-repository basis via the repository’s gitweb.patches configuration variable (integer).

🌈 avatar 🌈

Avatar support. When this feature is enabled, views such as "shortlog" or "commit" will display an avatar associated with the email of each committer and author. 👤

Currently available providers are "gravatar" and "picon". Only one provider at a time can be selected (the default is a one-element list). If an unknown provider is specified, the feature is disabled. Note that some providers might require extra Perl packages to be installed; see gitweb/INSTALL for more details.

This feature can be configured on a per-repository basis via the repository’s gitweb.avatar configuration variable.

See also %avatar_size with pixel sizes for icons and avatars ("default" is used for one-line like "log" and "shortlog", "double" is used for two-line like "commit", "commitdiff" or "tag"). If the default font sizes or lineheights are changed (e.g. via adding an extra CSS stylesheet in @stylesheets), it may be appropriate to change these values. 🎨

• email-privacy — redacts e-mail addresses from the generated HTML and all the other content gitweb spits out 💅. What that means: the addresses it pulls from the author/committer and comment sections of the Git log get obscured. It's meant to hinder web crawlers that harvest and abuse addresses — and yeah, those crawlers may not respect robots.txt, so this is your girl doing the work manually. ⚠️ Heads up though: users and user tools also see the addresses as redacted. So if Gitweb is not the final step in a workflow, the subsequent steps may misbehave because of the redacted info they get handed. Not enabled by default.
• highlight — server-side syntax highlight support in the "blob" view ✨. It requires the $highlight_bin program to be available (peep the description of that variable up in the "Configuration variables" section, bestie), and therefore it's disabled by default.

You can configure this feature on a per-repository basis via the repository's gitweb.highlight configuration variable (boolean). 🫶

• remote_heads — enable displaying remote heads (remote-tracking branches) in the "heads" list. In most cases the list of remote-tracking branches is an unnecessary internal private detail, and this feature is therefore disabled by default. git-instaweb(1), which is usually used to browse local repositories, enables and uses this feature. 👑

You can configure this feature on a per-repository basis via the repository's gitweb.remote_heads configuration variable (boolean).

The remaining features cannot be overridden on a per project basis. Not a drill. 🙈

• search — enables text search, which will list the commits which match author, committer or commit text to a given string; see the description of --author, --committer and --grep options in git-log(1) manpage. Enabled by default. 🔍

Project specific override is not supported.

• forks — if this feature is enabled, gitweb considers projects in subdirectories of project root (basename) to be forks of existing projects. For each project $projname.git, projects in the $projname/ directory and its subdirectories will not be shown in the main projects list. Instead, a '+' mark is shown next to $projname, which links to a "forks" view that lists all the forks (all projects in $projname/ subdirectory). Additionally a "forks" view for a project is linked from project summary page. 🍴

If the project list is taken from a file ($projects_list points to a file), forks are only recognized if they are listed after the main project in that file. iykyk.

Project specific override is not supported.

• actions — insert custom links to the action bar of all project pages. This allows you to link to third-party scripts integrating into gitweb. 💫

The "default" value consists of a list of triplets in the form ("<label>", "<link>", "<position>") where "position" is the label after which to insert the link, "link" is a format string where %n expands to the project name, %f to the project path within the filesystem (i.e. "$projectroot/$project"), %h to the current hash ('h' gitweb parameter) and %b to the current hash base ('hb' gitweb parameter); %% expands to '%'.

For example, at the time this page was written, the https://repo.or.cz Git hosting site set it to the following to enable graphical log (using the third party tool git-browser):

$feature{'actions'}{'default'} =
        [ ('graphiclog', '/git-browser/by-commit.html?r=%n', 'summary')];

This adds a link titled "graphiclog" after the "summary" link, leading to git-browser script, passing r=<project> as a query parameter. Slay.

Project specific override is not supported.

• timed — enable displaying how much time and how many Git commands it took to generate and display each page in the page footer (at the bottom of page). For example the footer might contain: "This page took 6.53325 seconds and 13 Git commands to generate." Disabled by default. ⏱️

Project specific override is not supported.

• javascript-timezone — enable and configure the ability to change a common time zone for dates in gitweb output via JavaScript. Dates in gitweb output include authordate and committerdate in "commit", "commitdiff" and "log" views, and taggerdate in "tag" view. Enabled by default. 🌍

The value is a list of three values: a default time zone (for if the client hasn't selected some other time zone and saved it in a cookie), a name of cookie where to store selected time zone, and a CSS class used to mark up dates for manipulation. If you want to turn this feature off, set "default" to empty list: [].

Typical gitweb config files will only change starting (default) time zone, and leave other elements at their default values:

$feature{'javascript-timezone'}{'default'}[0] = "utc";

The example configuration presented here is guaranteed to be backwards and forward compatible. 🫶

Time zone values can be "local" (for local time zone that browser uses), "utc" (what gitweb uses when JavaScript or this feature is disabled), or numerical time zones in the form of "+/-HHMM", such as "+0200".

Project specific override is not supported.

• extra-branch-refs — list of additional directories under "refs" which are going to be used as branch refs. For example if you have a gerrit setup where all branches under refs/heads/ are official, push-after-review ones and branches under refs/sandbox/, refs/wip and refs/other are user ones where permissions are much wider, then you might want to set this variable as follows:

$feature{'extra-branch-refs'}{'default'} =
        ['sandbox', 'wip', 'other'];

This feature can be configured on per-repository basis after setting $feature{extra-branch-refs}{override} to true, via repository's gitweb.extraBranchRefs configuration variable, which contains a space separated list of refs. An example:

[gitweb]
        extraBranchRefs = sandbox wip other

The gitweb.extraBranchRefs is actually a multi-valued configuration variable, so following example is also correct and the result is the same as of the snippet above:

[gitweb]
        extraBranchRefs = sandbox
        extraBranchRefs = wip other

⚠️ It is an error to specify a ref that does not pass git check-ref-format scrutiny. Duplicated values are filtered.

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🌸 EXAMPLES 🌸

So you wanna enable blame, pickaxe search, and snapshot support (allowing "tar.gz" and "zip" snapshots), while allowing individual projects to turn them off? Bestie, just put the following in your GITWEB_CONFIG file:

$feature{'blame'}{'default'} = [1];
$feature{'blame'}{'override'} = 1;

$feature{'pickaxe'}{'default'} = [1];
$feature{'pickaxe'}{'override'} = 1;

$feature{'snapshot'}{'default'} = ['zip', 'tgz'];
$feature{'snapshot'}{'override'} = 1;

If you allow overriding for the snapshot feature, you can specify which snapshot formats are globally disabled. You can also add any command-line options you want (such as setting the compression level). For instance, you can disable Zip compressed snapshots and set gzip(1) to run at level 6 by adding the following lines to your gitweb configuration file:

$known_snapshot_formats{'zip'}{'disabled'} = 1;
$known_snapshot_formats{'tgz'}{'compressor'} = ['gzip','-6'];

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💀 BUGS 💀

Real talk: debugging would be easier if the fallback configuration file (/etc/gitweb.conf) and the environment variable to override its location (GITWEB_CONFIG_SYSTEM) had names reflecting their "fallback" role. The current names are kept to avoid breaking working setups. Not me reading a variable called _SYSTEM and thinking it's the main one 😭 — it's the fallback, bestie, write it down.

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🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

The location of per-instance and system-wide configuration files can be overridden using the following environment variables:

• GITWEB_CONFIG — sets location of per-instance configuration file. ✨
• GITWEB_CONFIG_SYSTEM — sets location of fallback system-wide configuration file. This file is read only if per-instance one does not exist.
• GITWEB_CONFIG_COMMON — sets location of common system-wide configuration file. 🎀

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🎀 FILES 🎀

• gitweb_config.perl — this is the default name of per-instance configuration file. The format of this file is described above. 👆
• /etc/gitweb.conf — this is the default name of fallback system-wide configuration file. This file is used only if per-instance configuration variable is not found.
• /etc/gitweb-common.conf — this is the default name of common system-wide configuration file. 🦋

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👀 SEE ALSO 👀

gitweb(1), git-instaweb(1)

gitweb/README, gitweb/INSTALL

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👑 GIT 👑

Part of the git(1) suite. Periodt. 💜

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And that's the whole page, bestie — you made it to the end 🫶✨ This one's from Git 2.56.0, dated 2026-09-27, and it's the GITWEB.CONF(5) manual page. Go configure something iconic. 💅🌸